Jewel loans given for quarry land too, flays Minister

As the officials started digging more into the jewel loan scam in cooperative societies in the state, more shocking information like loans being taken for quarry land have started to emerge said Minister for Cooperation I Periyasamy on Thursday.

“In the previous AIADMK rule, a lot of irregularities and frauds have happened in loans given by coop societies,” the Minister said in an interview to a private channel.

An official attached to cooperative department while explaining the scam, said that though the loan process was completely done on computers, core banking facility was not available in the department, which means that the details stored were in computers that were kept in the cooperative bank concerned and not recorded on a central server.

“Most of the irregularities were committed after the annual audit. Such fraudulent activities will be carried out only close to the Assembly elections with the belief that the new govt will waive the loans,” said the official, on condition of anonymity.

Sources in cooperation department said that a majority of the fraudulent activities were detected in Salem, Namakkal, Kanniyakumari and Tiruvannamalai districts.

Meanwhile, a police inquiry is underway into a complaint of issuing loans running upto several lakhs by receiving fake jewels at Mallasamudram Primary Agricultural Co-Operative Credit Society in Namakkal. Ten employees in the society were accused of being hand in glove and issuing loans for over Rs 11 lakhs for imitation jewellry.